Every now and then I get teased about the barren waste that is my Facebook account. No avatar, no personal info, a handful of University friends I haven't talked to in years, and a bunch of game messages & invitations. I often claim lack of time, but sometimes I give the honest answer that I value my privacy, which almost always gets people giggling or rolling their eyes as if I had delusions of grandeur. There is a widespread and simply misplaced belief that privacy is only a concern for Hollywood actors and politicians. I can live with that, it doesn't bother me. There is a vicious version of the belief that really gets on my nerves, though - the "nothing to hide" voyeur's argument.

It goes like this: "You don't hide anything if you have nothing to hide." This seems to be the recent trend, and it's getting worrisome for me. Facebook has been casting privacy to the winds lately, with their terms of use changing almost daily to reflect the new policies. If you have a FB account, then more and more aspects of it are going to be public, you won't have a choice and you will be poorly informed at best. Friend lists already are public. So will profiles. In the words of the FB founder, "the world is going public". I love the English language, I really do (or I wouldn't be here ). Its power to express strong concepts with a minimum of sounds is unmatched. Unfortunately, it can be used for cheesy slogans like this, as well. Have you asked the world if he's going public lately? I've left a message on his answering machine, hope he'll hit me back shortly.

The Google CEO said: "if you do something you don't want anyone to know, then you probably shouldn't be doing it." This is officially scary (and definitely not the first time Google provides morality as a PDF download for the masses; turns out their motto "don't be evil" is not just a...

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